The reason is that industrial monoculture gutted 'town life' in the American Midwest.
Thousands of these towns are zombies, animated by social security, medicare, and real estate inflation.
Retirees own property, pay taxes for schools(property tax based off inflated land values from mass migration and money printing aka fake value) and employ hospital workers, artisanal small businesses, and subcontractors(plumbers, roofers, masons, carpenters, electricians, etc) all with that welfare money.
Iowa's entire state budget is $9.65 billion. These old age programs bring in over triple that number annually:
Social Security: $14.3 billion (2023)
Medicaid (federal share): $6.27 billion
Medicare: ~$11 billion (est.; 681k enrollees)
Over the next decade the boomers will pass and the money will dry up. The fake rural small town economies will collapse along with their real estate values, and the governments will be insolvent.
I genuinely don’t understand why people don’t sell everything they have, move to Iowa, buy a beautiful old house for next to nothing, and start enjoying a simpler, better, and more affordable life.